On June 19, the Hannibal Square Community Land Trust will hold its second annual Juneteenth Celebration Event at 7 p.m. The live virtual event, which can be joined on Facebook or YouTube is set to be co-hosted by former Rollins College professor, Dr. Julian C. Chambliss, Ph.D., and Associate Professor of History at the University of Central Florida, Dr. Scot French.
The program, titled Imagining Freedom: Black Community and Creating Place, will address topics regarding the Juneteenth holiday, which commemorates African American freedom in the United States. On June 19, 1865, word of freedom reached the final group of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, despite the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation, which legally abolished slavery after the Civil War, was made effective in January 1863, two and a half years earlier.